May 13, 2025 ⢠45 mins
On this episode of Butternomics, our host, Brandon Butler, sits down with Marlon Williams—founder of Starter Labs and the Atlanta Blockchain Center—to break down why Web3 could be the most important wealth shift of our generation. From starting with no connections in Atlanta to launching two venture-backed platforms, Marlon shares how he built trust, capital, and community in a space most people still don’t understand. He explains blockchain in plain language, lays out why culture needs to be at the table, and shares a bold vision for where Atlanta fits into the next digital economy. If you’re tired of being late to the wave, this episode is your head start.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Again, there's an interesting time to be alive because we're
the intersection of like AI and finance coming together. It
just unravels all sorts of possibilities, and that that's being
one of them. But I do think that we're gonna
see some of the biggest wealth creation over the next
decade because of blockchain and crypto and AI combined, and
(00:24):
we're trying to make sure that we're right in the
middle of.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
All of that.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
Hey, everybody, welcome to another episode of butter Nomics. I'm
your hol's Brandon Butler, found the CEO of Butter atl
And today we got my guy in the building. So
my guy, Marlon Williams in the building. He just landed
the jet outside. He parked in the parking lot, all
the part, all the traffics.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Body.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
You're gonna find out why in a second. But Marlin, man,
how you doing.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Man?
Speaker 1 (00:51):
I'm doing pretty good, man, you know, just glad to
be uh, to be awakened and working on a mission,
given give another chance to work on a mission.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
Absolutely absolute. Now, Marl, I'm gonna introduce you. But we
do something a little bit different here at Butter We've
been doing some a little bit different folks. So what
I did was I went into chat gpt okay, and
I asked chat gpt, who is Marlon Williams. Right, that's
founder of the Atlanta Blockchain Center. So I'm gonna read
what it said to you about that. You let me
(01:18):
know you know how many zero's is off?
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Gotcha? Gotcha? All right, that's a good one.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
Marlon Williams is a business and community leader with a
deep passion for innovation in philanthropy. He is the founder
of the Atlanta Blockchain Center, an organization dedicated to transform
Atlanta into a top ten innovation hub for blockchain, crypto,
and Web three technologies within five years. The Center serves
as a twenty four to seven learning hub, incubator, and
co working space focused exclusively on Web three, aiming to
(01:46):
cultivate a diverse ecosystem in these emerging fields. In addition
to his work with the Atlanta Blockchain Center, Williams founded
starter Labs, a leading crypto launch pad, incubator, and investor
network that has facilitated the crowd funding of over forty
five million dollars for more than sixty blockchain based projects.
His extensive experience includes co founding the Tellos dot net
(02:08):
blockchain and founding Cubicles. I think I said there correctly,
a cloud based software platform. Williams Is also held positions
such as the chair of the Inspector General Office for
the Wax Blockchain and a board member of the South
Florida Digital Alliance. Through these ventures, Williams is establishing himself
as a key figure in advancing blockchain technology and fostering
(02:28):
innovation within the Atlanta community.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
What do you think that is impressive?
Speaker 3 (02:33):
That's from It's a little scary.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
It's right on point, man, It's right on point.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
You know. I think the only thing I would have added.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
Was working with some of the work that I did
with students, you know, trying to get students in UH
to be to be software guys, to be in tech.
But outside of that, man, that's that's scary as that is.
Speaker 3 (02:59):
I purpose. We put in like minimal information to prompt
I tell your name, and I tell you where you're
at and from there and this is what it comes back.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
So I'm just telling you, good, that's good. I gotta
try it out.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
Hey, man, I appreciate you coming up. You know what
I'm saying. I always appreciate you know. I was at
the grand open of the Atlanta Blockchain Center. That for you.
But how's it been going since then?
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Man, Yeah, it's been it's been good man.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
Overall, you know, we've had we've had challenges, for sure,
as every startup does. And I think especially when we're
you know, you're you're pursuing a mission like that like
we are, which is a very very challenging mission. Uh,
it's it's it's going to be a rocky road. But
we've had some amazing wins and I'm enjoying the journey,
(03:45):
you know, I'm enjoying the journey. But overall, it's it's amazing.
We have some phenomenal brothers and sisters that are building
in blockchain that called the Atlanta Blockchain Center their home,
you know, and so many people are like, man, I'm
so glad we have.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
A space like this.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
I thought it was just me sitting in my basement,
you know, trading crypto. Realizing that Atlanta is a whole
bunch of us, said so it's it's good.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
It's good, Merlin.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
Look, before we get into this interview, I only got
one real question to ask you. Yeah, man, sure, how
come you didn't tell me about bitcoin at five dollars.
That's the only beef I got with you when it
was that five dollars. I mean, I only think we
knew each other then you didn't tell me at five dollars.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
No, man, I was.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
I was trying to shout it to a lot of people.
I referenced a few emails where I sent a few
friends like, man, it's just a billion dollar market cap,
you know, check this out. I think it was one
hundred dollars. Yeah, But I found out about it just
a few months after it came out in summer two
thousand and nine. And you know, at the time, you know,
(04:51):
I was really focused on building a B two B
software company startup, so I didn't really pay much attention.
And plus, you know, in the early it was like
this wasn't that interesting, you know, but I did follow
along with what was happening. And plus, you know, being
in tech as you know, it would be in the
(05:12):
news every now and then, so I always follow followed along.
But I got more involved in twenty eleven, you know,
started doing some play.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
Mining at this mining.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
Pool, and in twenty thirteen that's when I launched the
company I was working on for about two years. The
software at the time. That's when I really got involved,
you know. So I would say I officially got into
bigcoin twenty thirteen, but I knew about it since the
beginning and I played around with it.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
In twenty eleven.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
But back then it was all about the cloud b
to be you know, sass and going from on premise
to cloud. So that's that's why I was thinking about, like,
what's what's my next you know venture going to be.
I wish I would have built like the foreside back
in two thousand and nine, to built like a bitcoin
wall this stuff, you know, but I'm still grateful, grateful
(06:03):
to have discovered it early.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
What's up? So what first got you interested in it?
So again to your point, your background, you were, you know, engineer,
You're working on your own startups and doing tech and
then you kind of start hitting us, what kind of
first pulled you into that whole blockchain web three world.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
Well, in twenty thirteen, I launched my call center platform.
About a year later, I felt like we needed to
do something different, you know, I felt that it wasn't
it wasn't as interesting as and exciting as I thought
it was going to be as a business, and I
just started looking at how could I incorporate something to
(06:40):
make us really really stand out. Yeah, and so I
started looking at it at blockchain as a way to
do it. So the idea initially came from the reason
I really got into blockchain completely was because of my startup,
the call center startup. I thought that there was a
way to compensate callsner agents better and reward them better.
(07:02):
So was I started building a mechanism like a reward
based system based on blockchain. And when I started going
down that route, that's when it really hit me what
the potential of the technology was.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
And I never look back. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
You know, when when you and when you say potentially
getting out, you know, we're just talking about all blind right, Like,
I'm a tech guy. You can get as technical with
me as you want, but everybody's listening is not. So
you know, when you talk about potential, right, like what
it defintly do you mean when you say you saw
the potential of blockchain?
Speaker 1 (07:34):
That's a great question. You know, we're so accustomed to
these centralized systems of operation just across the board when
we're interacting with you know, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Google, Amazon,
We're accustomed to you to interacting with the centralized institutions
(07:55):
that and services that are I guess now that they're
golias and what they what they do. But when I
discovered that blockchain technology really was designed to disrupt that,
to flip it, uh, that's what made me excited about
it because I realized that one of the goals of
blockchain technology is to put the power back into our hands.
(08:18):
Yeah right, And it started with finance, but it applies
across the board, you know. And so that's the thing
that made me realize that this is the future, no
matter how long it takes us to get there.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
This is the future.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
The future is us being in control of our data,
us being in control of everything that we do online,
and the technology that that's ushering us into that that
future is blockchain. That's what I discovered when I was
kind of doing these experiments, and it was like holy cow.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
Yeah, you know, because you can say it.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
So I just doubled down and it wasn't it wasn't
you know, an complete go blockchain. It was more like, okay,
moonlighting kind of operation and then slowly transition full time
into it.
Speaker 3 (09:07):
Okay, all right, And so because that point, so you
exited your company that you were doing that with, and
you kind of just said, you know what, I'm going
to build something in this space and kind of really
start looking into it.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
Is that how I kind of that's exactly how it went.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
So what was what was kind of your first foray
into it? Like once you sold your company and kind
of started moving, Like, what did you first start doing
when you got involved in this whole block where you
where you? Where you again just purely trading? Were you mining?
Like it was kind of your first entry point Beyond that.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
I didn't sell the company.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
I Uh, I started offering clients to run it themselves, right,
So we started creating instances of the cloud system and
letting them operate it, so kind of incrementally offloaded the
operations to them. And in that process, I was still
building this call center blockchain reward system. And when that
(09:58):
was ready to go, I realized that the blockchain tech
was so it was so early that it couldn't support
an enterprise level system. It couldn't support very high demand,
high throughput applications like call center demands. So, you know,
I started looking at the chains that were out there.
(10:20):
There were new chains popping up, and I realized that,
you know, there was only one particular chain that could
support a lot of the transaction through put that we needed, right,
a lot of the workload that we needed for this
new blockchain system I was building. And it wasn't Bitcoin. Bitcoin,
you know, you can't. You know, well, now there's there's
some advancements there, but back then you couldn't really build anything.
(10:41):
You couldn't build a business on top of bitcoin. And
the theorem came out you could use ethereum, but it
was slow as hell.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
You know, it still still is.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
So I started looking at this blockchain called EOS and
they were just doing an ico I think this was
early twenty seventeen or late twenty sixty. Uh, they were,
they were raising some fund So I invested in EOS
and started getting myself involved in the community, and so,
you know, it got close to the team is you know,
they when they launched, things didn't really go as planned,
(11:14):
you know, So what me and a group of other
guys started doing was, you know, we're like, well, we
see the potential that EOS has. It wanted it wanted
to be a blockchain where real businesses could build on
top of. But there were some there were so many,
you know, so many internal issues with with the with
(11:36):
the chain that it caused a lot of us to
kind of, uh move away. So we ended up building
our own chain that we called it Telos. And the
reason I started working on that was specifically to run
my call center rewards system on the blockchain. Right, And
(11:57):
then that chain started just started growing. I mean we
we had one hundred people like right, almost instantly, and
then that grew to thousands and tens of thousands, and
it just took off. And as a result of the
success of that, I was like, man, you know, do
I want to go back to this call service?
Speaker 2 (12:17):
Right?
Speaker 3 (12:19):
Nah?
Speaker 2 (12:20):
You know, I'm think I'm good. I think you're good.
You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
And you know, just because of that, you know, I was,
I was. You know, it was a very rewarding, rewarding edition.
It took us years to do it, but so so,
you know, having the experience of building a blockchain that
really cemented like, Okay, this is where I need to
be completely and now we're in twenty twenty twenty, nineteen
(12:48):
twenty twenty, and DeFi started becoming a thing. Decentralized finance
started becoming a thing on ethereum, and I started exiting
tellos and focusing on building in DeFi. So I started
building some yield generating tools. Uh some of the rates
were ridiculous, you know, It's like thousands and thousands of
(13:10):
percent go forth. And that led me to realize that
because there were so many bad actors at the time,
you know, it led me to realize that, you know,
the blockchain in crypto community needs a safe place for
people to invest and discover projects. And I started, Uh,
(13:30):
that's what gave me the idea for Starter Labs, right,
So I started building a decentralized version of kickstarter. Okay,
and it was at a time when again DeFi was
sort of getting getting hot. It's getting really hot. So
it's one of the things where it was just like
(13:50):
the perfect time, perfect product, perfect place, and you know,
I spent I spent a couple of months building the technology,
the smart contracts and so forth, and when I launched
it again over that weekend, it was it was it
was a smash. You know, we had over twenty thousand
people planning the network because so many investors in crypto
were getting we called getting rugged, Yeah, getting rugged, right,
(14:14):
you know, yeah, uh, and we were uh the second
launch pat in the entire industry, and we were solving
the problem for them in a way that that they
that resonated, you know, and would start the labs. After
the success of our launch, we ended up just helping
you know, a lot of different projects raise money. You
(14:34):
take a percentage of every every every raise. We ended
up doing our own kind of fund on the side,
you know, and and uh, you know the rest of.
Speaker 3 (14:42):
This you just you just summon it up on a friend. Trust,
I get what you're saying, just say it, but no,
you know, it's really interesting though, like in those stories,
everything that you built started with the problem that you
recognized that you were having, so like it was almost
like you were your first customs. And I think that's
something that people should take away from this, right, Like
a lot of great businesses are built and grow because
(15:05):
you see a specific problem or opportunity you're like something
should exist. And so you've really started solving your own problem.
That's you did with Tellos to build that and and
support with your other network, and then same thing with
Starter Labs, right, Like you saw the problem that was
happening in the in the market with again people getting
rug pulled and all this stuff. And so I just
think that's a really good takeaway for folks that some
of the best things are based on not just problems,
the problems that you had because you literally built the
(15:26):
thing that you needed, right, and so you know, you
were on you were your own best use case for sure.
You know a lot of times I think we end
up solving problems for other people. Thinks we think that
are problems. But again, like when you did it, then
other people saw it, and you saw the instant kind
of you know, momentum around it, like that just validates
that idea. So not again, I think that's just really
an interesting point and that's why I want to kind
of call that out people that are listening.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
But yeah, I.
Speaker 3 (15:48):
Agree, when did Atlanta blockchain Center? Because you weren't in
Atlanta at this time. He was in Miami, right, It's
like when when you moved to Atlanta at a certain point,
(16:08):
like when did the next evolution with led you to
Atlanta Blockchain Center start?
Speaker 1 (16:12):
Yeah, that's a that's a that's a good question. So
I met my wife Megan in twenty seventeen. She came
down from LA for some like a Black Film festival
or something, and we stay connected. So we were doing
this long distance thing for for a number of years. Uh,
and then we decided to try to move.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
In together, you know.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
And when we when we when we said that, you know,
she didn't want to move to Miami Beach. I was
living on Ocean Drives. I have my condo. Uh and
you know Ocean Drive It's it's wild.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
You know. They lived there for.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
Seven years and it was crazy. But you see, she
didn't want to she didn't want to live there, and rightly, so,
you know, the Miami Beach, in Miami in particular, isn't
it's to me industry like like LA or Atlanta. And
she moved here after college after she graduated from UK,
she moved to Atlanta and stayed here for a little
bit and then went to LA. And so she's like,
(17:12):
what about Atlanta. I was like, yeah, I think Atlanta school.
Will go check it out.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
You know.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
So we would come here, we would stay for a
week and come back and you know, just do We
did that for a long time, trying to learn the
neighborhoods and you know, the areas that we liked. But
before that, before that I came to Atlanta multiple times,
of course, but I came during let's say twenty sixteen,
seventeen eighteen for this group that was called the Atlanta
(17:38):
Blockchain tab Okay, and they were having events at a
tech village and after that they would go over to
the Twin Peaks next door and hang out and network
and so forth. So yeah, I knew those fellas right
just from coming up from Miami and networking. So you know,
it seemed like they were because of the pandemic. It
(17:59):
seems like they were inactive. And I'm like, man, you know,
I Atlanta doesn't have a blockchain community anymore, you know.
And I'm telling MEGANI I'm like, you know, I I uh,
in Miami it's hot for crypto, you know what I'm saying.
And I'm like, I don't. I don't know if uh
this is the city you know, for me? But sure enough,
(18:19):
you know, I started thinking, like again to your point
about sometimes creating a solution to problems that you have
is a great strategy for for initition, for starting businesses.
I started thinking like, man, you know, what if I
do it? But if I started, if I you know.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
The community isn't there anymore, So why don't I just
create one.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
You know, people here exactly you know, in their basement
of doing something uh and so uh uh that that
was the genesis of the Atlanta Blockchain Center. So this idea,
you know, let me, I'll get a space and I
will kind of build a community that that that we need.
And I also started as a huge opportunity because this
(19:01):
is Atlanta, right, It's rare to to go into a
city and have an opportunity to trail blaze in an
industry like blockchain, uh and and sort of like uplift
the entire city, you know. And that's the that's the
way that I see our mission. You know, we haven't
we haven't quite gotten there yet. But I think over
the next five ten years, a lot of companies coming
(19:22):
out of the Blockchain Center, a lot of people in
our community are going to be the next Unicorns the
next you know, companies that are creating jobs the next
you look at what's happening in the blockchain space, crypto
in general. Trump is launching, which is wild.
Speaker 3 (19:40):
I'm sorry this is even like a political point. I'm
just saying it's just wild. The most powerful person in
the world can be like, oh I got a coin.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
I'm telling you, I'm telling you. And so you know,
that just validates to me that that that the blockchain
is here to stay. And again, I just saw it
as a unique opportunity for I almost feel like God
made this for me. Yeah, you know, like I was
meant to be here to do this to you know,
usher in blockchain technology, blockchain innovation and startups, cultivate startup
(20:15):
startups around that for us, for the Atlanta ecosystem, and uh,
you know that's that's how it kind of it kind
of happened. So huge thanks is Yeah, I give a
huge shout out to Megan for that because she she's
the one who decided.
Speaker 3 (20:31):
Rest to Atlanta. You know, that's the button. Yeah, no, man,
that's cool. So how and again we were talking about
this little bit offline, but like how many companies now
are being incubated out of the Atlanta Blockchain Center.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
So we've incubated twenty seven companies. And the way the
incubator White structured the incubator was, uh, you know, I
figured because at this at that point, I had you know,
four startups that did well, you know, about six or
seven that failed. So you know, at that point, I
had roughly about you know, ad experience launching about ten
(21:07):
different startups, and I wanted to structure the Incubator in
the way that we could I could share my story,
my path with with them, but I also wanted to
bring in a different perspective. So I worked with Brian Zwerner,
who runs the Beyond a Game network. It's a it's
a fund for athletes. He invests in sports based ideas,
(21:33):
and you know, we we decided to run the Incubator
twice a year, so Q one and Q three usually
every year. We accept applications for people who want to
build in crypto, in blockchain. We review the applications, and
the ones that we accept, we take them through a
you know, six week in person program. I require everyone
(21:54):
to be in Atlanta. If you're not in Atlanta, you
know it's not for you, because again, our mission is
to elevate at and we want people who are living
here to be the next unicorns and you know, building
the next blockchains and so forth, and so go through
the six week program. After that, we uh you know,
would help them with some sort of funding, whether we
(22:16):
fund them you know ourselves through like technical grants, so
a lot of them have helped like build out their
products for them. Others we've we've written a couple of
checks and you know, like Project Pie, uh you know,
we we helped them raise a quarter million dollars in
the seed and we just helped companies get off the ground,
(22:38):
you know. And I think a lot of a lot
of the work that we're doing is it's still sort
of uh I would I would say behind the scenes work,
but at some point, I think we're going to see
a lot of the efforts of of of of our
labor of that we've been putting in for the past
three years consistently come to fruition. So that's the that's
(22:59):
the pro cess for the incubator. And we've taken in
twenty seven companies, uh so far. Some are you know,
kind of like idle, you know how it is. It's
it's a numbers game, right, So some are some some
of the companies, some of the founders they've you know,
went through the incubator, they were kind of like motivated
and kind of gave up. Others are doing it so
(23:23):
like a hobby. And it's a few others that are
just they're living and breathing this thing and that those
are the guys that we're looking for. Right. So it's
it's been, it's been good. And out of the twenty
seven companies, twenty five percent of them women, right really, yeah, absolutely,
we've had women, We've had Indian, black, white. I mean,
(23:49):
you know it's mostly black, but it's it's just amazing
to see the diversity their incubator and the founders, you know.
And so when we go out there, we we represent.
We go to these conferences. We all were all you know,
ABC shirts and hoodies and so forth, and we'll.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
Be rolling deep like ye a little Atlanta, you know,
you like a little Atlanta the way you walk in
because you know it's like, yes, say we stand out,
you know, like it's like you know when you go
certain places folks. I remember I was in South Africa
a couple of years ago, like a year or two ago,
and I had some some of my buddies with me,
and they were like, oh, yeah, y'all the Atlanta boys. Yeah,
(24:27):
it was like y'all from Atlanta. We can just tell
by the way y'all moved. And I feel like it's
the same thing.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
Yeah, that's exactly the same thing. It's the same thing, man,
And we always make some noise because they we hear remnants,
we see remnants of it throughout different different things. So
we certainly make some noise. We'll go out and that's
what it's about. We're letting, We're letting the rest of
the world know that Atlanta has a blockchain community and
a strong one, and we're coming.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
Yeah, we're coming. It's just mean.
Speaker 3 (24:54):
Look, he was in Miami, and I know Miami is
you know when he say that the crypto capital, crypto
city or whatever, and the mayor has been really big
with that. But even now without Mary Dickens and the
team here, like he's a tech he's a tech guy too,
you know. He like, I wanted to Land to be
a tech first city, and so yeah, all those things
getting put in place. But look, man, okay, look, look
we we've talked about the past. Marg Like, I'm gonna
(25:15):
be honest, part of the reason why I brought you
in here, bro, I want to talk about the future.
You're you're at the you're at the cutting edge of
the stuff.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
You're you're you're you're.
Speaker 3 (25:23):
Helping grow and fund and build startups that are doing
you know, what the future of crypto is gonna look like,
the future of web three.
Speaker 2 (25:31):
Block chain?
Speaker 3 (25:32):
I want to know what what excites you? Like, what
what's coming? Like, where is this industry going? What should
we be looking out for? Because like I told you
telling me about bigcombs that five bucks, So again, now
I want to know, like, what's what's next. Especially we
were talking a little bit about you know, AI and
AI agents and all this stuff, but like what's what
what what? What's the future look like? Where's this thing going?
(25:53):
What's exciting you in the space right now?
Speaker 2 (25:56):
Man?
Speaker 1 (25:56):
What you know, what's exciting me is uh the time
that we're living in. You know, like we're literally living
in a time where finance is being redefined. I mean,
the world is being redefined through blockchain, you know. And
I know most people think about just the crypto side
because that's what gets the most attention, But blockchain technology
(26:20):
is really going to be the rails of the future.
Right A lot of the products and services that we use,
whether it's radio or television or you know, logistics, it's
going to have blockchain involved in some capacity. So the
you know, that excites me because it's it's a it's
akin to you know, being around when you know the
(26:44):
rail railroads were being laid down. That that's that's effectively
what what what blockchain is. It's you know, the railroads
of the future. That's very exciting because we're able to
participate in this new economy in a decentralized, nearly unbiased way.
I mean, you know this there's a whole different subject,
(27:06):
but we can all get involved in partake of this
this new revolution. And that's the difference in the past. Right,
So in the past, look at the previous industrial revolutions,
we've mostly missed out, yeah, right, for a lot of
reasons that we all know. And so you know, for
me to be here at a time like this when
(27:30):
this is you know, to me, this is our fourth
industrial revolution and we get to lay the groundwork for
our family, for the future, and for us to really
you know we talk about reparations and all this other
stuff that's basically the future.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (27:48):
It's allowing us, it's allowing us to to participate in
this in this age without any disruption, right. And so
I'm saying it is as humble as I can.
Speaker 3 (28:02):
You know what I meanside that humble stuff outside, man, Look,
I want to know. I want to know. I want
to know what I can tell you. Excited I am again,
but like come on, man, so I mean blow my mind,
like I want to know, like, what's what wh where's
(28:22):
this thing going?
Speaker 1 (28:23):
So because we we all get to participate without being
held back at any capacity, this is the time for
us to make a ship ton of money, right and
set ourselves up and our families up, and our communities
up for generational wealth. Absolutely, and that is what's really exciting.
(28:46):
You know, I'm on my second ferrari. I've bought houses
cash right, we you know are are We're in the
seven figure house as our main one. And you know
it's because of blockchain technology. Right we come from, especially us,
like that's built tech startups before we come from an
(29:06):
environment where, uh, we're constantly held back. How many times
have you sought funds for your startup?
Speaker 2 (29:12):
Access? See?
Speaker 1 (29:14):
I mean we know the stats, right, I mean the
stats were obvious. So in twenty twenty two, you know,
we had one percent of capital go to you know,
minority founders. Same thing two thousand and three, I think
it was one point two in two thousand and two,
twenty two and one percent in twenty twenty three. As
a matter of fact, in twenty twenty three, the entire
(29:34):
out of the entire venture capital industry, it's about thirty
billion dollars. That year, we raised one percent, so that's
three hundred million dollars. That same year, this one dude
raised three hundred million dollars himself, Adam Newman, we work founder. Right,
So this one white dude raised three hundred million dollars
and that's all the funds that went to all of
(29:55):
us a year. Right, So this is the only thing
that's going to change that. It's blockchain is crypto. There's
nothing else is going to change venture capital and disrupt
it for us other than blockchain.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
And you want to want to ask me what I'm
excited about. I'm excited about that.
Speaker 3 (30:11):
No, I mean that's actually crazy. But you just think
about it, right, Like you said, one percent, three hundred
million versus one person, one person doing three hundred million,
right and then and again that's not a thing that's
not uncommon in that space, right, Like they're look, maybe
maybe you only get a hundred million, you know what
I mean, Like some people do more. But again, the
(30:33):
fact that you're able to do these things and build them. So, like,
what kind of like what kind of what kind of technology,
what kind of innovations are we going to see in
this space? Based on what you're seeing, you.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
Know, a lot of it is, uh, it's going to
be finance related. That that's going to be disruptive, I think,
especially with AI. So we're going to see where we're
going into a future where you could plug in a
dollar and then just have AI go out there and
invest for you on your behalf.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
You don't have to think. You don't have to.
Speaker 1 (31:03):
Uh, you know, constantly check it's it's gonna go out there,
it's going to do the technical analysis. It's gonna if
a new coin comes out, it's gonna go it's gonna
find it. It's gonna sniff it and see if there's
any security you know issues if it's a rug pull
you know based on the code, if it's you know,
you don't need to really be a trader anymore. Right,
(31:23):
all of the trading skills skill set is going to
be inside of these agents, and you know, I think
I think that's going to be extremely disruptive because that
that's a product that could reach.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
The entire world. Everyone can use that. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
Right, So that's one of the things that that we're
excited about, uh, because that's what we're building at the
Blockchain Center, right. So we're building product called AI quant.
So if you go to ai quant dot fund, you'll
see some some agents that are going out there. They're
learning how to navigate the crypto space by themselves and
figure it out, you know, what's good, what's bad. They're
(31:57):
building a history of trades of you know, paper trades,
and when we unleash this thing, it's going to be wild.
Speaker 3 (32:05):
You know, I'm signing up right now, Right now, I'm
signing up. Let me know I'm in there.
Speaker 1 (32:11):
So so you know, these these autonomous agents, it's it's
it's again, it's an interesting time to be alive because
we're the intersection of like AI and finance coming together, right,
you know, it just unravels all sorts of possibilities, and
that that's being one of them.
Speaker 2 (32:30):
But I do think that.
Speaker 1 (32:32):
We're going to see some of the biggest wealth creation
over the next decade because of blockchain and crypto and
AI combined. And we're trying to make sure that we're
right in the middle of all of that.
Speaker 3 (32:57):
For those that want to hundred and follow right, Like
we talk about decentralization. To your point, like even the
most simple term like decentralizing finance was in the past.
If I wanted to send you money, I have to
go to a bank. I have to go to my bank,
I have to log in, and then I have to
say send the money to you, and then you know
what I mean, And then I have to send it
to your bank, and then you have to go to
(33:18):
the bank the money out. So that's what I mean, right,
But decentralization is basically saying, no, if I want to
send Marlin money, I should just be able to send
Marlin money and there's no intermediaries in there that are
taking a percentage here there, or you know, holding your
money and giving you point zero zero zero zero two
percent interest. You know what I'm saying. But it was
also interesting is again when you think about what you're
(33:39):
even saying, it's like it's not just decentralizing and disrupting
those those platforms, it's even decentralizing like access to the
tools that people are using, because again the reality is
most people don't have access to quants and by quant
we mean you know again quantitative trade coortinator analysis. We
don't have to quanum computers, you know what I mean,
(33:59):
they can like make the lightning fast trades based off
of light speed and all this. You know, maybe get
technical all y'all, Like I know, but it's also interesting,
like you're also even taking that now and putting it
in the hands of the people, and so to your point,
you know, yeah, like you're literally getting access to you know,
I saw I actually saw a video with Elon talking.
(34:20):
I saw it, like I think yesterday this morning. He said, like, look,
in the next ten years, if not sooner, AI is
going to be smarter than the smartest human being on earth.
Oh yeah, absolutely, you know, and then you think about
what that means, right, you think about again, not just
what that means, but the problems that will be able
to be solved, and just what people that typically couldn't
access that kind of knowledge has And that's where I
(34:42):
think people really miss out right. It's like, yeah, we
get on our phone, y'all, get your phone, y'all play candy.
Speaker 2 (34:45):
Crush, I get it.
Speaker 3 (34:47):
But there's a lot of other things you can do
from this device and from computers, and like what's going
to happen is with with with blockchain, with AI agents specifically,
it's going to put so much power in the hands
of the people that to your point, like this is
the chain to bridge that gap in some areas.
Speaker 2 (35:02):
Yeah, absolutely absolutely.
Speaker 1 (35:04):
And you know the the I like the I like
the analogy with the bank because you know, I'm sure
a lot of people can relate to going to the
bank and having to explain why you need your money, right,
you know.
Speaker 2 (35:19):
What I mean, Like, it's it's just ridiculous.
Speaker 3 (35:22):
Do you see the thing from you see the thing
for the director of Black Panther. You saw what happened
him like a year two. Yes, he went to the
bank to get his own money out and they called
the police.
Speaker 1 (35:31):
They thought he was trying to ride the bank exactly exactly.
That's the perfect that's the perfect. Yeah, yeah, it's it's
just it's just ridiculous. And and and that's that's again that's
why I really love what we what we do UH
in the Blockchain Center and kind of promoting the tech
because it just makes no sense for UH, for us
to be subject to these these sort of like centralized
(35:52):
middlemen who determine sometimes with without any sort of logic
whether we get access to certain things, you know, the
same thing with like like other products, so social media products,
not anyone in particular. But I think we we we
don't realize that where the where the you know, we're
the ones providing values to these networks absolutely right, Without
(36:14):
you posting, without you you know, up uploading images, without
you interacting and engaging with with posts, there is no
social media, right, And what do we get paid for that?
Speaker 2 (36:25):
Absolutely nothing?
Speaker 1 (36:26):
But where we're enriching the creators of the platform, because
they're the ones that's gathering all the data, all the
insights and reselling it and they've made it a huge
business model, right, And so data is a huge business,
our data, and we're not even benefiting from that in
any capacity, you know. And so I think that there
will be in the social media of the future, for
(36:47):
example that's powered by blockchain, where you post, you're going
to get compensated, uh, if you want, if they want
to the creators want to show your information to advertisers,
you're going to get compensated. Because you can opt in
or opt out. You can you control your full data
and how you interact with these products, right, And it's
not just social media, it's going to be with everything
(37:09):
that we use in the future, you know. But I
think AI agents are going to take it up another
level because not only are we going to be in
control of our data and how we interact with products
and services online, we get to delegate it to agents
and have them go do all kinds of crazy things
(37:30):
for us. Right, so in the future, we don't really
even need to interact with anything.
Speaker 2 (37:37):
Once set it up. You know, you set up an agent.
Speaker 1 (37:41):
If someone sends me a tweet, respond you, you know,
you handle everything for me. Right every Friday, go shopping
on you know, I don't know whatever, get me some groceries,
and it's it's it's it's just it's crazy, man. It's
crazy that we're actually here because this is what we
saw in the in the late eighties.
Speaker 2 (37:58):
And nineties and the cartoons.
Speaker 3 (38:00):
That's just I mean, people always people always talk about
like any and I mean I've seen the research and
people always talk about, yo, you know this is going
to happen, and like, but I think what's going to
actually happen is one It's I think it's gonna be
a while before AI can replicate like pure creativity of
humans yeah, I agree. So I think and I think
that's the thing that will always kind of be unique
(38:21):
to human to mankind right now. Again, it'll it'll be
able to do elements of it, but a lot again,
a lot of the ideas are going to be based
off of what it's seen and what it's been trained on,
what it's learned. But the idea that like to come
with something totally new. So I think what end up
happening too is is you get freed from all this
other stuff. It's just going to open up this whole
new opportunity for people to be creative in ways they
never even thought of, which is going to lead to
(38:41):
even more innovation.
Speaker 2 (38:43):
Right.
Speaker 3 (38:43):
But I mean I saw a thing where they were
talking about where Sam Altman was talking about like they're
building AI agents to where you'll be able to hire
like an enterprise level CEO, CMO, you know, for like
ten grand, twenty grand. Right again, so again, think of
about that, right, Like, if you have a startup, you
could hire somebody like you know, the the tim Cooks
(39:04):
of the world, like the people that operate at that level.
You can literally have that kind of knowledge coming into
your business right and helping you run it and then
you could have it run it like you literally come
up with this, do this and just depositive money here.
You know what I'm saying, Like, it's it's crazy.
Speaker 2 (39:21):
It is it is it's it's uh.
Speaker 3 (39:23):
And it's exciting, not crazy, but it exciting.
Speaker 1 (39:26):
Yeah, And that was actually I was going to say.
I was going to say, it's it's it's uh. It
is exciting because we get to participate, you know fully
this time. And that's what that's what I would encourage
everyone to do, is you don't miss out on the
opportunities that's that's in front of us, you know, in
front of you, because you know that's that's like right
(39:46):
now with AI agents and and crypto, this is the
second opportunity to get bitcoin at five dollars.
Speaker 3 (39:53):
Okay, then that's what I want to know.
Speaker 2 (39:59):
I I was waiting on.
Speaker 3 (40:01):
Hey man, look Maron, this has been a great real
quick before we get out of here, man, one thing
I just want to ask you is you kind of
talked about this a second ago. I just want to
expand on it. With all the stuff you're doing, and
you know, you're still a young guy, you know what
I mean, You're still young guy, you know what I mean, Like,
but what legacy do you want to leave behind when
it's all said and done.
Speaker 1 (40:20):
You know, I used to be uh selfish, and I think,
you know, we have to be in order for us
to achieve a certain level of success. But now I
am all about helping other people. I really get encouraged
and you know, you're thrilled just seeing other people win.
And that is really what I am dedicated to the
(40:42):
rest of my life too, just to helping other people win.
So I think that's that's really it I want. I
want to I want to empower our people. I want
to power the next generation of builders, creators, particularly in tech,
and see them go on to create the next Apple
and and Microsoft's of the world in the blockchain space,
(41:03):
and you know, create a better lives for themselves and
their families. You know, I always wanted to build a
software company that would employ thousands and thousands and thousands
of people.
Speaker 2 (41:15):
You know.
Speaker 1 (41:16):
I studied Bill Gates and you know, Larry Ellison and
Steve Jobs and all these guys when I was coming
up as a software developer early two thousands, and I
never achieved that, you know, but I lots of amazing startups.
I have code and products that living out there in
the world from you know, acquisitions and this and that,
(41:38):
and I no longer have that interest, right. My interest
now is to reach a billion people by reaching the
people in front of me and empowering them to go
on and impact the next ten people, the next twenty people.
Speaker 2 (41:53):
Right.
Speaker 1 (41:55):
So that's it. I want to reach a billion people
act on their lives, whether it's through you know, the
Atlanta Blockchain Center, like five people through at the Blockchain Center.
But but that's that's it. It's it's really uh. I
want to be remembered as the person who helped create
(42:17):
a thriving economy for African Americans in Atlanta and across
the world.
Speaker 2 (42:23):
And I think I'll be fine after that.
Speaker 1 (42:25):
Just go ride some horses and a farm and play
with goats and chickens.
Speaker 2 (42:30):
It's funny.
Speaker 3 (42:30):
It's funny.
Speaker 2 (42:31):
Like that's what it always goes.
Speaker 3 (42:32):
Back to, you know, just like it always met the simplicity, right.
I always tell people like, look, man, I'm just trying
to win, and I'm gonna go somewhere and I'm open
up an ice cream stand on the beach and I'm
gonna call it Magic City and nobody's gonna know why.
Nobody's gonna know why Medic City sells ice cream except me.
Speaker 2 (42:50):
And it's cool.
Speaker 3 (42:51):
I'm gonna be right near the ocean. I'm gonna eat
lobster every day and sell ice cream at Magic City.
Speaker 2 (42:56):
Man, I'm telling you, man, that's that's it. That's it.
That's exactly it. Hey, Martin luke Maan.
Speaker 3 (43:00):
I appreciate you coming in. I know definitely. Look, you
want to reach a billion people. I promise you, bro,
you reached one today. So we're doing something. I don't
know what it is. We're doing something. I'm litching you
know right now before we got out of here. Man,
please tell people how can they, you know, find out
more about what the Atlanta Blockchain Center is. How can
they get involved? Like where they need to go to
(43:21):
get more information?
Speaker 1 (43:22):
So you can go to Atlanta Chain dot iOS our
website to find out more. To sign up for coworking space,
you know it just come by any Thursday. So we
have open community meetups every single Thursday for three years straight.
We only missed three three Thursdays, Thanksgiving twenty twenty two,
Thanksgiving twenty twenty three, and Thanksgiving.
Speaker 2 (43:42):
You know otherwise we're working. We're working.
Speaker 1 (43:44):
So every single Thursday, the entire Atlanta ecosystem is welcome
to come by and learn about blockchain network with us,
connect with some of the brothers and sisters that they're
building the next products in the space. And you know,
on Instagram LinkedIn it's Atlanta chain everywhere.
Speaker 3 (44:02):
Oo man willill mar I appreciate this. May you come
in again. The future looks bright. You're doing amazing work
over there. Congratulations on everything. Like I said, I've been
rocking with you since you first came out here in
the Atlanta Blockchain Center day one day one day one,
you know, and so I'm just so excited for y'all
that I can't wait to see what happens next.
Speaker 2 (44:23):
Man.
Speaker 3 (44:23):
But again, congratulations and we out.
Speaker 2 (44:25):
That's the pod. Y'all.
Speaker 3 (44:27):
You've been listening to button Nomics and I'm your host,
Brandon Butler. Got comments, feedback? Want to be on the show,
Send us an email today at hello at butteronomics dot com.
Butter Nomics is produced in Atlanta, Georgia at iHeartMedia by
Casey Pegram, with marketing support from Queen and Nikki. Music
provided by Mister Hanky if you haven't already, hit that
subscribe button and never missed an episode, and be sure
(44:47):
to follow us on all our social platforms at butter
dot at L. Listen to button Nomics on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1 (45:00):
Dump ump up,
Again, there's an interesting time to be alive because we're
the intersection of like AI and finance coming together. It
just unravels all sorts of possibilities, and that that's being
one of them. But I do think that we're gonna
see some of the biggest wealth creation over the next
decade because of blockchain and crypto and AI combined, and
(00:24):
we're trying to make sure that we're right in the
middle of.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
All of that.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
Hey, everybody, welcome to another episode of butter Nomics. I'm
your hol's Brandon Butler, found the CEO of Butter atl
And today we got my guy in the building. So
my guy, Marlon Williams in the building. He just landed
the jet outside. He parked in the parking lot, all
the part, all the traffics.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Body.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
You're gonna find out why in a second. But Marlin, man,
how you doing.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Man?
Speaker 1 (00:51):
I'm doing pretty good, man, you know, just glad to
be uh, to be awakened and working on a mission,
given give another chance to work on a mission.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
Absolutely absolute. Now, Marl, I'm gonna introduce you. But we
do something a little bit different here at Butter We've
been doing some a little bit different folks. So what
I did was I went into chat gpt okay, and
I asked chat gpt, who is Marlon Williams. Right, that's
founder of the Atlanta Blockchain Center. So I'm gonna read
what it said to you about that. You let me
(01:18):
know you know how many zero's is off?
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Gotcha? Gotcha? All right, that's a good one.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
Marlon Williams is a business and community leader with a
deep passion for innovation in philanthropy. He is the founder
of the Atlanta Blockchain Center, an organization dedicated to transform
Atlanta into a top ten innovation hub for blockchain, crypto,
and Web three technologies within five years. The Center serves
as a twenty four to seven learning hub, incubator, and
co working space focused exclusively on Web three, aiming to
(01:46):
cultivate a diverse ecosystem in these emerging fields. In addition
to his work with the Atlanta Blockchain Center, Williams founded
starter Labs, a leading crypto launch pad, incubator, and investor
network that has facilitated the crowd funding of over forty
five million dollars for more than sixty blockchain based projects.
His extensive experience includes co founding the Tellos dot net
(02:08):
blockchain and founding Cubicles. I think I said there correctly,
a cloud based software platform. Williams Is also held positions
such as the chair of the Inspector General Office for
the Wax Blockchain and a board member of the South
Florida Digital Alliance. Through these ventures, Williams is establishing himself
as a key figure in advancing blockchain technology and fostering
(02:28):
innovation within the Atlanta community.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
What do you think that is impressive?
Speaker 3 (02:33):
That's from It's a little scary.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
It's right on point, man, It's right on point.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
You know. I think the only thing I would have added.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
Was working with some of the work that I did
with students, you know, trying to get students in UH
to be to be software guys, to be in tech.
But outside of that, man, that's that's scary as that is.
Speaker 3 (02:59):
I purpose. We put in like minimal information to prompt
I tell your name, and I tell you where you're
at and from there and this is what it comes back.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
So I'm just telling you, good, that's good. I gotta
try it out.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
Hey, man, I appreciate you coming up. You know what
I'm saying. I always appreciate you know. I was at
the grand open of the Atlanta Blockchain Center. That for you.
But how's it been going since then?
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Man, Yeah, it's been it's been good man.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
Overall, you know, we've had we've had challenges, for sure,
as every startup does. And I think especially when we're
you know, you're you're pursuing a mission like that like
we are, which is a very very challenging mission. Uh,
it's it's it's going to be a rocky road. But
we've had some amazing wins and I'm enjoying the journey,
(03:45):
you know, I'm enjoying the journey. But overall, it's it's amazing.
We have some phenomenal brothers and sisters that are building
in blockchain that called the Atlanta Blockchain Center their home,
you know, and so many people are like, man, I'm
so glad we have.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
A space like this.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
I thought it was just me sitting in my basement,
you know, trading crypto. Realizing that Atlanta is a whole
bunch of us, said so it's it's good.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
It's good, Merlin.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
Look, before we get into this interview, I only got
one real question to ask you. Yeah, man, sure, how
come you didn't tell me about bitcoin at five dollars.
That's the only beef I got with you when it
was that five dollars. I mean, I only think we
knew each other then you didn't tell me at five dollars.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
No, man, I was.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
I was trying to shout it to a lot of people.
I referenced a few emails where I sent a few
friends like, man, it's just a billion dollar market cap,
you know, check this out. I think it was one
hundred dollars. Yeah, But I found out about it just
a few months after it came out in summer two
thousand and nine. And you know, at the time, you know,
(04:51):
I was really focused on building a B two B
software company startup, so I didn't really pay much attention.
And plus, you know, in the early it was like
this wasn't that interesting, you know, but I did follow
along with what was happening. And plus, you know, being
in tech as you know, it would be in the
(05:12):
news every now and then, so I always follow followed along.
But I got more involved in twenty eleven, you know,
started doing some play.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
Mining at this mining.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
Pool, and in twenty thirteen that's when I launched the
company I was working on for about two years. The
software at the time. That's when I really got involved,
you know. So I would say I officially got into
bigcoin twenty thirteen, but I knew about it since the
beginning and I played around with it.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
In twenty eleven.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
But back then it was all about the cloud b
to be you know, sass and going from on premise
to cloud. So that's that's why I was thinking about, like,
what's what's my next you know venture going to be.
I wish I would have built like the foreside back
in two thousand and nine, to built like a bitcoin
wall this stuff, you know, but I'm still grateful, grateful
(06:03):
to have discovered it early.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
What's up? So what first got you interested in it?
So again to your point, your background, you were, you know, engineer,
You're working on your own startups and doing tech and
then you kind of start hitting us, what kind of
first pulled you into that whole blockchain web three world.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
Well, in twenty thirteen, I launched my call center platform.
About a year later, I felt like we needed to
do something different, you know, I felt that it wasn't
it wasn't as interesting as and exciting as I thought
it was going to be as a business, and I
just started looking at how could I incorporate something to
(06:40):
make us really really stand out. Yeah, and so I
started looking at it at blockchain as a way to
do it. So the idea initially came from the reason
I really got into blockchain completely was because of my startup,
the call center startup. I thought that there was a
way to compensate callsner agents better and reward them better.
(07:02):
So was I started building a mechanism like a reward
based system based on blockchain. And when I started going
down that route, that's when it really hit me what
the potential of the technology was.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
And I never look back. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
You know, when when you and when you say potentially
getting out, you know, we're just talking about all blind right, Like,
I'm a tech guy. You can get as technical with
me as you want, but everybody's listening is not. So
you know, when you talk about potential, right, like what
it defintly do you mean when you say you saw
the potential of blockchain?
Speaker 1 (07:34):
That's a great question. You know, we're so accustomed to
these centralized systems of operation just across the board when
we're interacting with you know, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Google, Amazon,
We're accustomed to you to interacting with the centralized institutions
(07:55):
that and services that are I guess now that they're
golias and what they what they do. But when I
discovered that blockchain technology really was designed to disrupt that,
to flip it, uh, that's what made me excited about
it because I realized that one of the goals of
blockchain technology is to put the power back into our hands.
(08:18):
Yeah right, And it started with finance, but it applies
across the board, you know. And so that's the thing
that made me realize that this is the future, no
matter how long it takes us to get there.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
This is the future.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
The future is us being in control of our data,
us being in control of everything that we do online,
and the technology that that's ushering us into that that
future is blockchain. That's what I discovered when I was
kind of doing these experiments, and it was like holy cow.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
Yeah, you know, because you can say it.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
So I just doubled down and it wasn't it wasn't
you know, an complete go blockchain. It was more like, okay,
moonlighting kind of operation and then slowly transition full time
into it.
Speaker 3 (09:07):
Okay, all right, And so because that point, so you
exited your company that you were doing that with, and
you kind of just said, you know what, I'm going
to build something in this space and kind of really
start looking into it.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
Is that how I kind of that's exactly how it went.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
So what was what was kind of your first foray
into it? Like once you sold your company and kind
of started moving, Like, what did you first start doing
when you got involved in this whole block where you
where you? Where you again just purely trading? Were you mining?
Like it was kind of your first entry point Beyond that.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
I didn't sell the company.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
I Uh, I started offering clients to run it themselves, right,
So we started creating instances of the cloud system and
letting them operate it, so kind of incrementally offloaded the
operations to them. And in that process, I was still
building this call center blockchain reward system. And when that
(09:58):
was ready to go, I realized that the blockchain tech
was so it was so early that it couldn't support
an enterprise level system. It couldn't support very high demand,
high throughput applications like call center demands. So, you know,
I started looking at the chains that were out there.
(10:20):
There were new chains popping up, and I realized that,
you know, there was only one particular chain that could
support a lot of the transaction through put that we needed, right,
a lot of the workload that we needed for this
new blockchain system I was building. And it wasn't Bitcoin. Bitcoin,
you know, you can't. You know, well, now there's there's
some advancements there, but back then you couldn't really build anything.
(10:41):
You couldn't build a business on top of bitcoin. And
the theorem came out you could use ethereum, but it
was slow as hell.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
You know, it still still is.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
So I started looking at this blockchain called EOS and
they were just doing an ico I think this was
early twenty seventeen or late twenty sixty. Uh, they were,
they were raising some fund So I invested in EOS
and started getting myself involved in the community, and so,
you know, it got close to the team is you know,
they when they launched, things didn't really go as planned,
(11:14):
you know, So what me and a group of other
guys started doing was, you know, we're like, well, we
see the potential that EOS has. It wanted it wanted
to be a blockchain where real businesses could build on
top of. But there were some there were so many,
you know, so many internal issues with with the with
(11:36):
the chain that it caused a lot of us to
kind of, uh move away. So we ended up building
our own chain that we called it Telos. And the
reason I started working on that was specifically to run
my call center rewards system on the blockchain. Right, And
(11:57):
then that chain started just started growing. I mean we
we had one hundred people like right, almost instantly, and
then that grew to thousands and tens of thousands, and
it just took off. And as a result of the
success of that, I was like, man, you know, do
I want to go back to this call service?
Speaker 2 (12:17):
Right?
Speaker 3 (12:19):
Nah?
Speaker 2 (12:20):
You know, I'm think I'm good. I think you're good.
You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
And you know, just because of that, you know, I was,
I was. You know, it was a very rewarding, rewarding edition.
It took us years to do it, but so so,
you know, having the experience of building a blockchain that
really cemented like, Okay, this is where I need to
be completely and now we're in twenty twenty twenty, nineteen
(12:48):
twenty twenty, and DeFi started becoming a thing. Decentralized finance
started becoming a thing on ethereum, and I started exiting
tellos and focusing on building in DeFi. So I started
building some yield generating tools. Uh some of the rates
were ridiculous, you know, It's like thousands and thousands of
(13:10):
percent go forth. And that led me to realize that
because there were so many bad actors at the time,
you know, it led me to realize that, you know,
the blockchain in crypto community needs a safe place for
people to invest and discover projects. And I started, Uh,
(13:30):
that's what gave me the idea for Starter Labs, right,
So I started building a decentralized version of kickstarter. Okay,
and it was at a time when again DeFi was
sort of getting getting hot. It's getting really hot. So
it's one of the things where it was just like
(13:50):
the perfect time, perfect product, perfect place, and you know,
I spent I spent a couple of months building the technology,
the smart contracts and so forth, and when I launched
it again over that weekend, it was it was it
was a smash. You know, we had over twenty thousand
people planning the network because so many investors in crypto
were getting we called getting rugged, Yeah, getting rugged, right,
(14:14):
you know, yeah, uh, and we were uh the second
launch pat in the entire industry, and we were solving
the problem for them in a way that that they
that resonated, you know, and would start the labs. After
the success of our launch, we ended up just helping
you know, a lot of different projects raise money. You
(14:34):
take a percentage of every every every raise. We ended
up doing our own kind of fund on the side,
you know, and and uh, you know the rest of.
Speaker 3 (14:42):
This you just you just summon it up on a friend. Trust,
I get what you're saying, just say it, but no,
you know, it's really interesting though, like in those stories,
everything that you built started with the problem that you
recognized that you were having, so like it was almost
like you were your first customs. And I think that's
something that people should take away from this, right, Like
a lot of great businesses are built and grow because
(15:05):
you see a specific problem or opportunity you're like something
should exist. And so you've really started solving your own problem.
That's you did with Tellos to build that and and
support with your other network, and then same thing with
Starter Labs, right, Like you saw the problem that was
happening in the in the market with again people getting
rug pulled and all this stuff. And so I just
think that's a really good takeaway for folks that some
of the best things are based on not just problems,
the problems that you had because you literally built the
(15:26):
thing that you needed, right, and so you know, you
were on you were your own best use case for sure.
You know a lot of times I think we end
up solving problems for other people. Thinks we think that
are problems. But again, like when you did it, then
other people saw it, and you saw the instant kind
of you know, momentum around it, like that just validates
that idea. So not again, I think that's just really
an interesting point and that's why I want to kind
of call that out people that are listening.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
But yeah, I.
Speaker 3 (15:48):
Agree, when did Atlanta blockchain Center? Because you weren't in
Atlanta at this time. He was in Miami, right, It's
like when when you moved to Atlanta at a certain point,
(16:08):
like when did the next evolution with led you to
Atlanta Blockchain Center start?
Speaker 1 (16:12):
Yeah, that's a that's a that's a good question. So
I met my wife Megan in twenty seventeen. She came
down from LA for some like a Black Film festival
or something, and we stay connected. So we were doing
this long distance thing for for a number of years. Uh,
and then we decided to try to move.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
In together, you know.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
And when we when we when we said that, you know,
she didn't want to move to Miami Beach. I was
living on Ocean Drives. I have my condo. Uh and
you know Ocean Drive It's it's wild.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
You know. They lived there for.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
Seven years and it was crazy. But you see, she
didn't want to she didn't want to live there, and rightly, so,
you know, the Miami Beach, in Miami in particular, isn't
it's to me industry like like LA or Atlanta. And
she moved here after college after she graduated from UK,
she moved to Atlanta and stayed here for a little
bit and then went to LA. And so she's like,
(17:12):
what about Atlanta. I was like, yeah, I think Atlanta school.
Will go check it out.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
You know.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
So we would come here, we would stay for a
week and come back and you know, just do We
did that for a long time, trying to learn the
neighborhoods and you know, the areas that we liked. But
before that, before that I came to Atlanta multiple times,
of course, but I came during let's say twenty sixteen,
seventeen eighteen for this group that was called the Atlanta
(17:38):
Blockchain tab Okay, and they were having events at a
tech village and after that they would go over to
the Twin Peaks next door and hang out and network
and so forth. So yeah, I knew those fellas right
just from coming up from Miami and networking. So you know,
it seemed like they were because of the pandemic. It
(17:59):
seems like they were inactive. And I'm like, man, you know,
I Atlanta doesn't have a blockchain community anymore, you know.
And I'm telling MEGANI I'm like, you know, I I uh,
in Miami it's hot for crypto, you know what I'm saying.
And I'm like, I don't. I don't know if uh
this is the city you know, for me? But sure enough,
(18:19):
you know, I started thinking, like again to your point
about sometimes creating a solution to problems that you have
is a great strategy for for initition, for starting businesses.
I started thinking like, man, you know, what if I
do it? But if I started, if I you know.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
The community isn't there anymore, So why don't I just
create one.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
You know, people here exactly you know, in their basement
of doing something uh and so uh uh that that
was the genesis of the Atlanta Blockchain Center. So this idea,
you know, let me, I'll get a space and I
will kind of build a community that that that we need.
And I also started as a huge opportunity because this
(19:01):
is Atlanta, right, It's rare to to go into a
city and have an opportunity to trail blaze in an
industry like blockchain, uh and and sort of like uplift
the entire city, you know. And that's the that's the
way that I see our mission. You know, we haven't
we haven't quite gotten there yet. But I think over
the next five ten years, a lot of companies coming
(19:22):
out of the Blockchain Center, a lot of people in
our community are going to be the next Unicorns the
next you know, companies that are creating jobs the next
you look at what's happening in the blockchain space, crypto
in general. Trump is launching, which is wild.
Speaker 3 (19:40):
I'm sorry this is even like a political point. I'm
just saying it's just wild. The most powerful person in
the world can be like, oh I got a coin.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
I'm telling you, I'm telling you. And so you know,
that just validates to me that that that the blockchain
is here to stay. And again, I just saw it
as a unique opportunity for I almost feel like God
made this for me. Yeah, you know, like I was
meant to be here to do this to you know,
usher in blockchain technology, blockchain innovation and startups, cultivate startup
(20:15):
startups around that for us, for the Atlanta ecosystem, and uh,
you know that's that's how it kind of it kind
of happened. So huge thanks is Yeah, I give a
huge shout out to Megan for that because she she's
the one who decided.
Speaker 3 (20:31):
Rest to Atlanta. You know, that's the button. Yeah, no, man,
that's cool. So how and again we were talking about
this little bit offline, but like how many companies now
are being incubated out of the Atlanta Blockchain Center.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
So we've incubated twenty seven companies. And the way the
incubator White structured the incubator was, uh, you know, I
figured because at this at that point, I had you know,
four startups that did well, you know, about six or
seven that failed. So you know, at that point, I
had roughly about you know, ad experience launching about ten
(21:07):
different startups, and I wanted to structure the Incubator in
the way that we could I could share my story,
my path with with them, but I also wanted to
bring in a different perspective. So I worked with Brian Zwerner,
who runs the Beyond a Game network. It's a it's
a fund for athletes. He invests in sports based ideas,
(21:33):
and you know, we we decided to run the Incubator
twice a year, so Q one and Q three usually
every year. We accept applications for people who want to
build in crypto, in blockchain. We review the applications, and
the ones that we accept, we take them through a
you know, six week in person program. I require everyone
(21:54):
to be in Atlanta. If you're not in Atlanta, you
know it's not for you, because again, our mission is
to elevate at and we want people who are living
here to be the next unicorns and you know, building
the next blockchains and so forth, and so go through
the six week program. After that, we uh you know,
would help them with some sort of funding, whether we
(22:16):
fund them you know ourselves through like technical grants, so
a lot of them have helped like build out their
products for them. Others we've we've written a couple of
checks and you know, like Project Pie, uh you know,
we we helped them raise a quarter million dollars in
the seed and we just helped companies get off the ground,
(22:38):
you know. And I think a lot of a lot
of the work that we're doing is it's still sort
of uh I would I would say behind the scenes work,
but at some point, I think we're going to see
a lot of the efforts of of of of our
labor of that we've been putting in for the past
three years consistently come to fruition. So that's the that's
(22:59):
the pro cess for the incubator. And we've taken in
twenty seven companies, uh so far. Some are you know,
kind of like idle, you know how it is. It's
it's a numbers game, right, So some are some some
of the companies, some of the founders they've you know,
went through the incubator, they were kind of like motivated
and kind of gave up. Others are doing it so
(23:23):
like a hobby. And it's a few others that are
just they're living and breathing this thing and that those
are the guys that we're looking for. Right. So it's
it's been, it's been good. And out of the twenty
seven companies, twenty five percent of them women, right really, yeah, absolutely,
we've had women, We've had Indian, black, white. I mean,
(23:49):
you know it's mostly black, but it's it's just amazing
to see the diversity their incubator and the founders, you know.
And so when we go out there, we we represent.
We go to these conferences. We all were all you know,
ABC shirts and hoodies and so forth, and we'll.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
Be rolling deep like ye a little Atlanta, you know,
you like a little Atlanta the way you walk in
because you know it's like, yes, say we stand out,
you know, like it's like you know when you go
certain places folks. I remember I was in South Africa
a couple of years ago, like a year or two ago,
and I had some some of my buddies with me,
and they were like, oh, yeah, y'all the Atlanta boys. Yeah,
(24:27):
it was like y'all from Atlanta. We can just tell
by the way y'all moved. And I feel like it's
the same thing.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
Yeah, that's exactly the same thing. It's the same thing, man,
And we always make some noise because they we hear remnants,
we see remnants of it throughout different different things. So
we certainly make some noise. We'll go out and that's
what it's about. We're letting, We're letting the rest of
the world know that Atlanta has a blockchain community and
a strong one, and we're coming.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
Yeah, we're coming. It's just mean.
Speaker 3 (24:54):
Look, he was in Miami, and I know Miami is
you know when he say that the crypto capital, crypto
city or whatever, and the mayor has been really big
with that. But even now without Mary Dickens and the
team here, like he's a tech he's a tech guy too,
you know. He like, I wanted to Land to be
a tech first city, and so yeah, all those things
getting put in place. But look, man, okay, look, look
we we've talked about the past. Marg Like, I'm gonna
(25:15):
be honest, part of the reason why I brought you
in here, bro, I want to talk about the future.
You're you're at the you're at the cutting edge of
the stuff.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
You're you're you're you're.
Speaker 3 (25:23):
Helping grow and fund and build startups that are doing
you know, what the future of crypto is gonna look like,
the future of web three.
Speaker 2 (25:31):
Block chain?
Speaker 3 (25:32):
I want to know what what excites you? Like, what
what's coming? Like, where is this industry going? What should
we be looking out for? Because like I told you
telling me about bigcombs that five bucks, So again, now
I want to know, like, what's what's next. Especially we
were talking a little bit about you know, AI and
AI agents and all this stuff, but like what's what
what what? What's the future look like? Where's this thing going?
(25:53):
What's exciting you in the space right now?
Speaker 2 (25:56):
Man?
Speaker 1 (25:56):
What you know, what's exciting me is uh the time
that we're living in. You know, like we're literally living
in a time where finance is being redefined. I mean,
the world is being redefined through blockchain, you know. And
I know most people think about just the crypto side
because that's what gets the most attention, But blockchain technology
(26:20):
is really going to be the rails of the future.
Right A lot of the products and services that we use,
whether it's radio or television or you know, logistics, it's
going to have blockchain involved in some capacity. So the
you know, that excites me because it's it's a it's
akin to you know, being around when you know the
(26:44):
rail railroads were being laid down. That that's that's effectively
what what what blockchain is. It's you know, the railroads
of the future. That's very exciting because we're able to
participate in this new economy in a decentralized, nearly unbiased way.
I mean, you know this there's a whole different subject,
(27:06):
but we can all get involved in partake of this
this new revolution. And that's the difference in the past. Right,
So in the past, look at the previous industrial revolutions,
we've mostly missed out, yeah, right, for a lot of
reasons that we all know. And so you know, for
me to be here at a time like this when
(27:30):
this is you know, to me, this is our fourth
industrial revolution and we get to lay the groundwork for
our family, for the future, and for us to really
you know we talk about reparations and all this other
stuff that's basically the future.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (27:48):
It's allowing us, it's allowing us to to participate in
this in this age without any disruption, right. And so
I'm saying it is as humble as I can.
Speaker 3 (28:02):
You know what I meanside that humble stuff outside, man, Look,
I want to know. I want to know. I want
to know what I can tell you. Excited I am again,
but like come on, man, so I mean blow my mind,
like I want to know, like, what's what wh where's
(28:22):
this thing going?
Speaker 1 (28:23):
So because we we all get to participate without being
held back at any capacity, this is the time for
us to make a ship ton of money, right and
set ourselves up and our families up, and our communities
up for generational wealth. Absolutely, and that is what's really exciting.
(28:46):
You know, I'm on my second ferrari. I've bought houses
cash right, we you know are are We're in the
seven figure house as our main one. And you know
it's because of blockchain technology. Right we come from, especially us,
like that's built tech startups before we come from an
(29:06):
environment where, uh, we're constantly held back. How many times
have you sought funds for your startup?
Speaker 2 (29:12):
Access? See?
Speaker 1 (29:14):
I mean we know the stats, right, I mean the
stats were obvious. So in twenty twenty two, you know,
we had one percent of capital go to you know,
minority founders. Same thing two thousand and three, I think
it was one point two in two thousand and two,
twenty two and one percent in twenty twenty three. As
a matter of fact, in twenty twenty three, the entire
(29:34):
out of the entire venture capital industry, it's about thirty
billion dollars. That year, we raised one percent, so that's
three hundred million dollars. That same year, this one dude
raised three hundred million dollars himself, Adam Newman, we work founder. Right,
So this one white dude raised three hundred million dollars
and that's all the funds that went to all of
(29:55):
us a year. Right, So this is the only thing
that's going to change that. It's blockchain is crypto. There's
nothing else is going to change venture capital and disrupt
it for us other than blockchain.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
And you want to want to ask me what I'm
excited about. I'm excited about that.
Speaker 3 (30:11):
No, I mean that's actually crazy. But you just think
about it, right, Like you said, one percent, three hundred
million versus one person, one person doing three hundred million,
right and then and again that's not a thing that's
not uncommon in that space, right, Like they're look, maybe
maybe you only get a hundred million, you know what
I mean, Like some people do more. But again, the
(30:33):
fact that you're able to do these things and build them. So, like,
what kind of like what kind of what kind of technology,
what kind of innovations are we going to see in
this space? Based on what you're seeing, you.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
Know, a lot of it is, uh, it's going to
be finance related. That that's going to be disruptive, I think,
especially with AI. So we're going to see where we're
going into a future where you could plug in a
dollar and then just have AI go out there and
invest for you on your behalf.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
You don't have to think. You don't have to.
Speaker 1 (31:03):
Uh, you know, constantly check it's it's gonna go out there,
it's going to do the technical analysis. It's gonna if
a new coin comes out, it's gonna go it's gonna
find it. It's gonna sniff it and see if there's
any security you know issues if it's a rug pull
you know based on the code, if it's you know,
you don't need to really be a trader anymore. Right,
(31:23):
all of the trading skills skill set is going to
be inside of these agents, and you know, I think
I think that's going to be extremely disruptive because that
that's a product that could reach.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
The entire world. Everyone can use that. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
Right, So that's one of the things that that we're
excited about, uh, because that's what we're building at the
Blockchain Center, right. So we're building product called AI quant.
So if you go to ai quant dot fund, you'll
see some some agents that are going out there. They're
learning how to navigate the crypto space by themselves and
figure it out, you know, what's good, what's bad. They're
(31:57):
building a history of trades of you know, paper trades,
and when we unleash this thing, it's going to be wild.
Speaker 3 (32:05):
You know, I'm signing up right now, Right now, I'm
signing up. Let me know I'm in there.
Speaker 1 (32:11):
So so you know, these these autonomous agents, it's it's
it's again, it's an interesting time to be alive because
we're the intersection of like AI and finance coming together, right,
you know, it just unravels all sorts of possibilities, and
that that's being one of them.
Speaker 2 (32:30):
But I do think that.
Speaker 1 (32:32):
We're going to see some of the biggest wealth creation
over the next decade because of blockchain and crypto and
AI combined. And we're trying to make sure that we're
right in the middle of all of that.
Speaker 3 (32:57):
For those that want to hundred and follow right, Like
we talk about decentralization. To your point, like even the
most simple term like decentralizing finance was in the past.
If I wanted to send you money, I have to
go to a bank. I have to go to my bank,
I have to log in, and then I have to
say send the money to you, and then you know
what I mean, And then I have to send it
to your bank, and then you have to go to
(33:18):
the bank the money out. So that's what I mean, right,
But decentralization is basically saying, no, if I want to
send Marlin money, I should just be able to send
Marlin money and there's no intermediaries in there that are
taking a percentage here there, or you know, holding your
money and giving you point zero zero zero zero two
percent interest. You know what I'm saying. But it was
also interesting is again when you think about what you're
(33:39):
even saying, it's like it's not just decentralizing and disrupting
those those platforms, it's even decentralizing like access to the
tools that people are using, because again the reality is
most people don't have access to quants and by quant
we mean you know again quantitative trade coortinator analysis. We
don't have to quanum computers, you know what I mean,
(33:59):
they can like make the lightning fast trades based off
of light speed and all this. You know, maybe get
technical all y'all, Like I know, but it's also interesting,
like you're also even taking that now and putting it
in the hands of the people, and so to your point,
you know, yeah, like you're literally getting access to you know,
I saw I actually saw a video with Elon talking.
(34:20):
I saw it, like I think yesterday this morning. He said, like, look,
in the next ten years, if not sooner, AI is
going to be smarter than the smartest human being on earth.
Oh yeah, absolutely, you know, and then you think about
what that means, right, you think about again, not just
what that means, but the problems that will be able
to be solved, and just what people that typically couldn't
access that kind of knowledge has And that's where I
(34:42):
think people really miss out right. It's like, yeah, we
get on our phone, y'all, get your phone, y'all play candy.
Speaker 2 (34:45):
Crush, I get it.
Speaker 3 (34:47):
But there's a lot of other things you can do
from this device and from computers, and like what's going
to happen is with with with blockchain, with AI agents specifically,
it's going to put so much power in the hands
of the people that to your point, like this is
the chain to bridge that gap in some areas.
Speaker 2 (35:02):
Yeah, absolutely absolutely.
Speaker 1 (35:04):
And you know the the I like the I like
the analogy with the bank because you know, I'm sure
a lot of people can relate to going to the
bank and having to explain why you need your money, right,
you know.
Speaker 2 (35:19):
What I mean, Like, it's it's just ridiculous.
Speaker 3 (35:22):
Do you see the thing from you see the thing
for the director of Black Panther. You saw what happened
him like a year two. Yes, he went to the
bank to get his own money out and they called
the police.
Speaker 1 (35:31):
They thought he was trying to ride the bank exactly exactly.
That's the perfect that's the perfect. Yeah, yeah, it's it's
just it's just ridiculous. And and and that's that's again that's
why I really love what we what we do UH
in the Blockchain Center and kind of promoting the tech
because it just makes no sense for UH, for us
to be subject to these these sort of like centralized
(35:52):
middlemen who determine sometimes with without any sort of logic
whether we get access to certain things, you know, the
same thing with like like other products, so social media products,
not anyone in particular. But I think we we we
don't realize that where the where the you know, we're
the ones providing values to these networks absolutely right, Without
(36:14):
you posting, without you you know, up uploading images, without
you interacting and engaging with with posts, there is no
social media, right, And what do we get paid for that?
Speaker 2 (36:25):
Absolutely nothing?
Speaker 1 (36:26):
But where we're enriching the creators of the platform, because
they're the ones that's gathering all the data, all the
insights and reselling it and they've made it a huge
business model, right, And so data is a huge business,
our data, and we're not even benefiting from that in
any capacity, you know. And so I think that there
will be in the social media of the future, for
(36:47):
example that's powered by blockchain, where you post, you're going
to get compensated, uh, if you want, if they want
to the creators want to show your information to advertisers,
you're going to get compensated. Because you can opt in
or opt out. You can you control your full data
and how you interact with these products, right, And it's
not just social media, it's going to be with everything
(37:09):
that we use in the future, you know. But I
think AI agents are going to take it up another
level because not only are we going to be in
control of our data and how we interact with products
and services online, we get to delegate it to agents
and have them go do all kinds of crazy things
(37:30):
for us. Right, so in the future, we don't really
even need to interact with anything.
Speaker 2 (37:37):
Once set it up. You know, you set up an agent.
Speaker 1 (37:41):
If someone sends me a tweet, respond you, you know,
you handle everything for me. Right every Friday, go shopping
on you know, I don't know whatever, get me some groceries,
and it's it's it's it's just it's crazy, man. It's
crazy that we're actually here because this is what we
saw in the in the late eighties.
Speaker 2 (37:58):
And nineties and the cartoons.
Speaker 3 (38:00):
That's just I mean, people always people always talk about
like any and I mean I've seen the research and
people always talk about, yo, you know this is going
to happen, and like, but I think what's going to
actually happen is one It's I think it's gonna be
a while before AI can replicate like pure creativity of
humans yeah, I agree. So I think and I think
that's the thing that will always kind of be unique
(38:21):
to human to mankind right now. Again, it'll it'll be
able to do elements of it, but a lot again,
a lot of the ideas are going to be based
off of what it's seen and what it's been trained on,
what it's learned. But the idea that like to come
with something totally new. So I think what end up
happening too is is you get freed from all this
other stuff. It's just going to open up this whole
new opportunity for people to be creative in ways they
never even thought of, which is going to lead to
(38:41):
even more innovation.
Speaker 2 (38:43):
Right.
Speaker 3 (38:43):
But I mean I saw a thing where they were
talking about where Sam Altman was talking about like they're
building AI agents to where you'll be able to hire
like an enterprise level CEO, CMO, you know, for like
ten grand, twenty grand. Right again, so again, think of
about that, right, Like, if you have a startup, you
could hire somebody like you know, the the tim Cooks
(39:04):
of the world, like the people that operate at that level.
You can literally have that kind of knowledge coming into
your business right and helping you run it and then
you could have it run it like you literally come
up with this, do this and just depositive money here.
You know what I'm saying, Like, it's it's crazy.
Speaker 2 (39:21):
It is it is it's it's uh.
Speaker 3 (39:23):
And it's exciting, not crazy, but it exciting.
Speaker 1 (39:26):
Yeah, And that was actually I was going to say.
I was going to say, it's it's it's uh. It
is exciting because we get to participate, you know fully
this time. And that's what that's what I would encourage
everyone to do, is you don't miss out on the
opportunities that's that's in front of us, you know, in
front of you, because you know that's that's like right
(39:46):
now with AI agents and and crypto, this is the
second opportunity to get bitcoin at five dollars.
Speaker 3 (39:53):
Okay, then that's what I want to know.
Speaker 2 (39:59):
I I was waiting on.
Speaker 3 (40:01):
Hey man, look Maron, this has been a great real
quick before we get out of here, man, one thing
I just want to ask you is you kind of
talked about this a second ago. I just want to
expand on it. With all the stuff you're doing, and
you know, you're still a young guy, you know what
I mean, You're still young guy, you know what I mean, Like,
but what legacy do you want to leave behind when
it's all said and done.
Speaker 1 (40:20):
You know, I used to be uh selfish, and I think,
you know, we have to be in order for us
to achieve a certain level of success. But now I
am all about helping other people. I really get encouraged
and you know, you're thrilled just seeing other people win.
And that is really what I am dedicated to the
(40:42):
rest of my life too, just to helping other people win.
So I think that's that's really it I want. I
want to I want to empower our people. I want
to power the next generation of builders, creators, particularly in tech,
and see them go on to create the next Apple
and and Microsoft's of the world in the blockchain space,
(41:03):
and you know, create a better lives for themselves and
their families. You know, I always wanted to build a
software company that would employ thousands and thousands and thousands
of people.
Speaker 2 (41:15):
You know.
Speaker 1 (41:16):
I studied Bill Gates and you know, Larry Ellison and
Steve Jobs and all these guys when I was coming
up as a software developer early two thousands, and I
never achieved that, you know, but I lots of amazing startups.
I have code and products that living out there in
the world from you know, acquisitions and this and that,
(41:38):
and I no longer have that interest, right. My interest
now is to reach a billion people by reaching the
people in front of me and empowering them to go
on and impact the next ten people, the next twenty people.
Speaker 2 (41:53):
Right.
Speaker 1 (41:55):
So that's it. I want to reach a billion people
act on their lives, whether it's through you know, the
Atlanta Blockchain Center, like five people through at the Blockchain Center.
But but that's that's it. It's it's really uh. I
want to be remembered as the person who helped create
(42:17):
a thriving economy for African Americans in Atlanta and across
the world.
Speaker 2 (42:23):
And I think I'll be fine after that.
Speaker 1 (42:25):
Just go ride some horses and a farm and play
with goats and chickens.
Speaker 2 (42:30):
It's funny.
Speaker 3 (42:30):
It's funny.
Speaker 2 (42:31):
Like that's what it always goes.
Speaker 3 (42:32):
Back to, you know, just like it always met the simplicity, right.
I always tell people like, look, man, I'm just trying
to win, and I'm gonna go somewhere and I'm open
up an ice cream stand on the beach and I'm
gonna call it Magic City and nobody's gonna know why.
Nobody's gonna know why Medic City sells ice cream except me.
Speaker 2 (42:50):
And it's cool.
Speaker 3 (42:51):
I'm gonna be right near the ocean. I'm gonna eat
lobster every day and sell ice cream at Magic City.
Speaker 2 (42:56):
Man, I'm telling you, man, that's that's it. That's it.
That's exactly it. Hey, Martin luke Maan.
Speaker 3 (43:00):
I appreciate you coming in. I know definitely. Look, you
want to reach a billion people. I promise you, bro,
you reached one today. So we're doing something. I don't
know what it is. We're doing something. I'm litching you
know right now before we got out of here. Man,
please tell people how can they, you know, find out
more about what the Atlanta Blockchain Center is. How can
they get involved? Like where they need to go to
(43:21):
get more information?
Speaker 1 (43:22):
So you can go to Atlanta Chain dot iOS our
website to find out more. To sign up for coworking space,
you know it just come by any Thursday. So we
have open community meetups every single Thursday for three years straight.
We only missed three three Thursdays, Thanksgiving twenty twenty two,
Thanksgiving twenty twenty three, and Thanksgiving.
Speaker 2 (43:42):
You know otherwise we're working. We're working.
Speaker 1 (43:44):
So every single Thursday, the entire Atlanta ecosystem is welcome
to come by and learn about blockchain network with us,
connect with some of the brothers and sisters that they're
building the next products in the space. And you know,
on Instagram LinkedIn it's Atlanta chain everywhere.
Speaker 3 (44:02):
Oo man willill mar I appreciate this. May you come
in again. The future looks bright. You're doing amazing work
over there. Congratulations on everything. Like I said, I've been
rocking with you since you first came out here in
the Atlanta Blockchain Center day one day one day one,
you know, and so I'm just so excited for y'all
that I can't wait to see what happens next.
Speaker 2 (44:23):
Man.
Speaker 3 (44:23):
But again, congratulations and we out.
Speaker 2 (44:25):
That's the pod. Y'all.
Speaker 3 (44:27):
You've been listening to button Nomics and I'm your host,
Brandon Butler. Got comments, feedback? Want to be on the show,
Send us an email today at hello at butteronomics dot com.
Butter Nomics is produced in Atlanta, Georgia at iHeartMedia by
Casey Pegram, with marketing support from Queen and Nikki. Music
provided by Mister Hanky if you haven't already, hit that
subscribe button and never missed an episode, and be sure
(44:47):
to follow us on all our social platforms at butter
dot at L. Listen to button Nomics on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1 (45:00):
Dump ump up,
Host
Brandon Butler
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